Jonathan Green (3) (1971–)

A Doctor Who Choose-Your-Own-Adventure -- excuse me, Choose the Future -- book, featuring (among other things) sea monsters, zombies, and smugglers, and aimed, like most of the modern Doctor Who tie-ins, more at the kids who are the show's ostensible primary audience than at anyone else.

I've been a fan of Choose-Your-Own-Adventure type books since their very beginning, and Doctor Who seems like it could lend itself really well to this kind of format. (Indeed, I have a couple of Doctor Who "game books" from the 80s that are basically just a slightly more sophisticated version of them, and I enjoyed those a lot. )

Unfortunately, this one does not live up to the potential. More than that, it completely screws up the structure. My first pass through, I somehow managed to miss all the opportunities to get some exposition, but it still dumped me out in the same place as if I had, so that my version of the Doctor was talking about things I hadn't learned and doing things I didn't even understand. Going back to re-visit the alternate choices I'd missed then proved to be an exercise in frustration. Mostly whatever choices you might make just lead you the same few places, often without much of anything interesting happening along the way, and even when you do get through it by taking the route the author apparently expects you to, the plot is still super thin, and the ending never feels quite supported by whatever went before it.

Rating: I almost never rate things this low, but I'm going to have to give this a 1.5/5. Look, if you're going to write a CYOA-style book, for crying out loud, at least make sure all the paths through the story work!… (meer)

This is a really fun deviation from the normal ff books. You start off dead, and you need to get revenge for your murder. There are lots of skills you can pick up, becoming different types of undead as you go. It's bigger than usual too, which is kind of exciting just for the novelty value. Maybe this one is a bit hard,because I couldn't get past a bit where I had to use a simple code to move forward but all the words I tried were wrong. Maybe I'm just an idiot! Will come back to this one again for sure. Definitely one of the best.

Second attempt, March 2023. Got a bit closer, getting my head around this book now. Couldn't get past the spirit lock.… (meer)